Wilshire Blvd. : L.A.’s ‘Main Street’ Takes Fast Track

The neighbors call it “the hole.” Once one of the largest department stores along Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile, since 1980 it has been a block-long, gaping pit surrounded by a cyclone fence.

This empty place where a Broadway store used to be has become a symbol of the shops that abandoned the once fashionable area, of the businesses that left for newer spaces, of the tarnished image befallen one of the older sections of the boulevard.

A few miles east in the mid-Wilshire district is the Ambassador Hotel, a gathering place of early Hollywood stars where much of Los Angeles’ showy style evolved in the 1920s and ‘30s. But the tinsel and pageantry moved on, as did many prestigious companies once located nearby. The once grand 65-year-old hotel, with much of its paint discolored by time, gilt moldings chipped and crystal chandeliers clouded by dust, is for sale.

But now, within blocks of the Broadway site and within a few blocks of the Ambassador, too, are ambitious efforts to rejuvenate the most historically significant areas of Los Angeles’ “main street.”

‘It’s Unique’

“Wilshire is on the way back, and much more quickly than people think,” said L. Dale Williamson, a vice president of Coldwell Banker’s commercial real estate services, adding that revitalization is inevitable.

“When you strip everything else away, Wilshire Boulevard is Wilshire Boulevard is Wilshire Boulevard,” he said. “It is one of the most widely known streets in the world. It’s unique.”

The changes are being spurred by preservationists, planners, developers and nearby residents who have sometimes conflicting agendas but agree that Wilshire needs help to come all the way back. Some of these groups have begun to unite in efforts to chart the future for both Miracle Mile and mid-Wilshire.

What’s happening is another sign of the renewal taking place in sections of central Los Angeles, such as Hollywood, Chinatown and Koreatown. As the city no longer has room to expand outward, developers are tending to “fill in” and upgrade older commercial areas.

Robust Health

Along Wilshire, the resurgence is attributed to a variety of factors, particularly the robust health of Beverly Hills and downtown Los Angeles, which is spilling over.

Signs of change include:

--The $35.3-million expansion of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, opening Nov. 23, includes an imposing new building with horizontal bands of glazed limestone and glass block, facing Wilshire. The expansion has spurred more development, including a planned 21-story office complex on museum land across the street.

--After years of decline, half a dozen large new office and retail projects, valued at more than $400 million, are nearing completion. Among them is the largest office complex ever built on the boulevard, Wilshire Courtyard.

--Two coalitions of businessmen or property owners and residential and community groups have formed within the last year--the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition and the Wilshire Stakeholders Group. The first was formed at the impetus of increasingly “Yuppified” residential associations concerned about how development affects their property values, and the second by property owners concerned over the effect of changing neighborhoods surrounding the Wilshire Center district just west of downtown.

--An effort spearheaded by the Los Angeles Conservancy to designate 19 buildings of the Miracle Mile as a historic district. According to Ruthann Lehrer, the Conservancy’s executive director, the area has “the best and most concentrated examples of Art Deco buildings in this city.”

The Malaysian investors who own the property containing “the hole” have announced tentative plans to fill it, by 1988, with a hotel and office building.

The return of night life and new housing have also accompanied renewal in the Miracle Mile. An ongoing $1-million renovation of the 50-year-old El Rey Theatre into a restaurant, nightclub and cabaret is expected to be completed in December. The 1 1/2-year-old Callender’s Restaurant, a Victorian design created at a cost of $6 million, has become a crowded Saturday night hangout. And a nearby 212-unit, turquoise- and salmon-colored apartment complex at 6th Street and Curson Avenue is the first major apartment building constructed in the area in decades.

‘Linear Downtown’

The near four-mile stretch of Wilshire Boulevard between MacArthur Park and Beverly Hills, bisecting an area that is home to about 250,000 people, has been important in the city’s history. This was Los Angeles’ first expression of a “linear downtown,” based on the emerging popularity of the automobile. It was here, not farther west on Wilshire’s 14-mile path to the Pacific, that the first elegant apartment houses, large churches, the first luxury resort hotel--the Ambassador--and the first major office buildings lined up in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s.

It was here, too, that the “tower” designs of the city’s best Art Deco buildings were constructed as “beacons” for passing motorists. Along Wilshire sprang up the first stores with large window displays, so drivers could see the merchandise, and main entrances in back, where the parking was.

The Wilshire Center section, between MacArthur Park and Wilton Place, was developed in the early 1900s, when Gaylord Wilshire, a socialist publisher, subdivided the first four blocks beyond MacArthur Park for residences.

He almost didn’t rename Nevada Street after himself because he was unsure the road had a future. The new boulevard’s first major structure, the Ambassador, opened on the site of a dairy farm in 1921.

The Miracle Mile, between Sycamore and Fairfax avenues, began in 1921, when developer A. W. Ross paid $54,000 for 18 acres when that section of Wilshire was no more than a service road for oil wells in the neighborhood. A median strip of palm trees and tropical plants was added in the 1950s.

‘Manhattanization’

The last decade saw a decline for several reasons. As the increasing prestige of West Los Angeles drew business and retail stores west, John Ferraro, councilman for much of the area, said, “Miracle Mile just sort of lay dormant.”

Farther east, the “Manhattanization” of downtown through city-sponsored redevelopment created a new urban core. Additional commercial development in the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys brought even more competition, Ferraro added, “at the expense of the Wilshire area.”

Ironically, the car that had spurred growth was also partly responsible for the demise of Wilshire Center and Miracle Mile, city planner Jim Anderson noted. “At one point they were ‘the edge’ (of town), but the city continued to grow, and they were sort of left behind, especially in commercial growth.”

The original car orientation of the street, at the expense of pedestrians, is considered an impediment by some planners. “It is not appropriate for all of Wilshire Boulevard, from One Wilshire downtown to Santa Monica, to be geared to pedestrian activity,” said Rex Lotery, head of Urban Innovations Group, an adjunct of UCLA’s Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning.

“But there are stretches, such as Wilshire Center, that should be more people-oriented,” Lotery said. “If you think of any of the great boulevards in the world, they are people places--Fifth Avenue, Park Avenue, the Champs-Elysees.”

Commercial Benefits

In coming years, the entire section of Wilshire Boulevard from MacArthur Park to Beverly Hills is likely to see further commercial benefits, experts say, from both Metro Rail and a projected tightening of the oversupply of office space. And because Wilshire is exempted from such development restrictions as Proposition U, approved by voters this month, the area should eventually benefit now that developers are limited in other sections of the city.

“As office space tightens at both ends, downtown and west,” Coldwell Banker’s Williamson said, “you’ll see resurgence in the middle.”

At the western end of Miracle Mile, transformation is most obvious. With the exception of Wilshire Courtyard, new office construction has been built away from the older buildings, as far west as possible, on the half-mile strip between Fairfax Avenue and San Vicente Boulevard, the Beverly Hills border. The largest are a 14-story black glass tower at Fairfax Avenue designed by Pereira Associates and a 23-story red granite Cadillac Fairview building at San Vicente.

Leasing agents marketing this section tend to refer to it as “Beverly Hills adjacent,” not “Miracle Mile.” And last year, when several property owners funded a planning study for the half-mile strip east of San Vicente, they renamed it “New Wilshire.”

But Jerome H. Snyder, who developed the $170-million Wilshire Courtyard in a joint venture with the California Federal Savings and Loan Assn., sees a continuing movement east.

“We always felt Miracle Mile had a great future because it’s an an extension of the existing Beverly Hills corridor,” he said.

Snyder was also the principal developer in a $35 million-renovation, completed three years ago, of Museum Square, east of Fairfax. The building was formerly Prudential Insurance Co.’s Western regional headquarters, but the company left in 1977.

Shabby Art Deco

The upscale changes coexist with abandoned storefronts, Art Deco buildings that look shabby from years of neglect and discount stores with paper signs hawking perpetual sales.

One of the largest discount operations is Mr. Price, located in the nine-story Desmond’s tower. Built in 1928, it was the first major building along the Miracle Mile. Although Desmond’s closed in 1980, its name is still hanging on the tower wall.

“I was just driving by and I saw the (empty) store,” George Moussazadeh, Mr. Price’s owner, said in recalling his 1981 opening. “The whole building was empty.”

He piled his merchandise, from radios and stereos to household goods, on thin pieces of carpeting held together with silver tape and put his giant discount signs “on everything,” he said, from windows to the outer walls.

“I’ve had people come in and say, ‘This building looks too nice for you to do this.’ ” He paused. “In a way, they’re right.”

Similar discount operations are common on “the mile.” But many are feeling squeezed, Moussazadeh said, by fancy restaurants and new developments. Rental prices have more than doubled in his building since he opened his store.

An architect and a landscape architect have moved into the building, and its owner, Moussa Shaaya, said he would prefer “art galleries, art-related businesses” as new tenants, not discount stores.

‘Up in Class’

But Moussazadeh is confident that his store will not be driven out. “I’ve cleaned up a little bit,” he said. Even before a city sign ordinance limiting permanent signs to 10% of store window space and temporary signs to 25% went into effect, he added, he removed several.

“Like the area, we’ve moved up in class,” he said.

Those who cherish the city’s architectural heritage believe that old buildings and “class” are not a contradiction. The Los Angeles Conservancy has gained the help of the five-year-old Miracle Mile Residential Assn. to try to place the four blocks between Detroit Street and Burnside Avenue on the National Register of Historic Places.

Some businessmen, like Snyder, question whether all the buildings are worth saving. “The Los Angeles Conservancy would like to have everything old and ugly stay forever,” he said. “They can stop the redevelopment of Miracle Mile by some of this kind of nonsense.”

But Nancy Michali, an urban designer and residential association member working on the project, said, “We see this as a needed balance and contrast to new development.”

Just as the commercial development has been helped by proximity to Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles, so have the residential neighborhoods around Miracle Mile.

“Most people buying are in their late 20s, early 30s,” said Gary Wallace, a Merrill Lynch Realty agent in the area. Values of the vintage homes constructed in the 1920s in the Miracle Mile, with vaulted open-beam ceilings, leaded and stained-glass windows and tile roofs, have risen an average of $35,000 in three years, Wallace said, to $200,000 and more.

The homeowners are active in what happens on Wilshire. “We think our residential community is tied directly to the success or failure of the development along that mile,” Bill Christopher, an architect, explained. “It’s our front door to the rest of the world.”

This year, they formed an alliance with Hancock Park and other residential groups to fight one Metro Rail proposal to use an elevated, instead of underground, track along Wilshire Boulevard. “You’d have a two-story-tall guideway eliminating the median strip with all the attendant noise and shadows,” Christopher said. “It would destroy the ambiance of what we hoped would be a tree-lined pedestrian center.”

At the same time, Miracle Mile homeowners have formed a partnership with business leaders.

“Things were going to dramatically change with or without us,” said Lyn MacEwen Cohen, president of the Miracle Mile Residential Assn. “So we decided what we should do is be involved in the changes.”

One-Acre Park

This began when Snyder, while planning Wilshire Courtyard, sought a general plan amendment for extra commercial density. Support from the community at his back door helped him get it.

In return, Snyder agreed to build, landscape and maintain a one-acre park at the back of his building, as a buffer between his development and the homes.

This year, the residents started the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition, including homeowners and executives from local corporations and businesses, including CalFed Inc., Ticor Title Insurance, May Co., Coldwell Banker and Snyder.

“It occurred to us we should see if there are some mutually beneficial goals,” Cohen said, “if we could work on things we both cared about--graffiti, beautification, the ugly (store) signs. . . . The whole thing is how you fight. I’m not looking for the two ends. I’m looking for the middle ground.”

An elaborate planning effort, meanwhile, is slated for the mid-Wilshire area, at the impetus of a group called the Wilshire Stakeholders, composed of more than two dozen major property owners, business tenants, church and community organizations.

The group started about a year ago at the urging of Wayne Ratkovich, a developer who had saved the glazed green terra cotta Wiltern Theatre and Pellissier office building from demolition and renovated them. He plans a $40-million office and retail complex next door.

‘The Move-Outs’

“We were being hurt from an image point of view,” Ratkovich said, the effect of what he calls “the move-outs”--companies like Travelers Insurance, Texaco, Arco and IBM that left the area over the last six years--and the changing neighborhood surrounding Wilshire.

The Pellissier office building is almost completely leased, by smaller tenants that commercial brokers say are increasingly common along mid-Wilshire: architectural, advertising, graphic arts and accountant firms. And several major corporations, like Thrifty, U.S. Borax, Carnation Co. and a slew of insurance companies are still in mid-Wilshire.

Commercial brokers like Rick Merritt of Merritt Real Estate Group note that the office vacancies found in mid-Wilshire have declined from a high of 24% last year to about 19%. That figure is not as good as in Westwood or West Los Angeles, he added, but no worse than downtown.

Still, the prevailing image of mid-Wilshire, Ratkovich said, is “as an area to get away from: ‘Move out of mid-Wilshire where all the crime is . . . all the deterioration is. . . . Move out before things get worse.’ ”

The surrounding neighborhood has indeed changed. Between 1970 and 1980, according to city figures, the number of Latinos in the area increased to 37% of the population, and Asians, including a growing Korean community, climbed to 22%. The white population declined, the median family income fell from $20,343 to $10,588, and unemployment jumped from 3% to 16%.

“It’s a classic situation where the occupancy of neighborhood apartments becomes increasingly elderly, so that when these people pass away or move, and the housing stock is older, new immigrants come in,” Emily Gabel, a Planning Department senior planner, said. “Then there’s a perception of instability because there’s a change in ‘the look.’ ”

Crime, especially automobile theft and narcotics, is a major problem in mid-Wilshire’s surrounding neighborhood, according to Ted Kozak, captain of Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division. But the boulevard itself, west of MacArthur Park, Kozak noted, “is the nicest area in my district. It’s the least of our problems.”

There has been recent development in the area, however, including an office building and shopping plaza. At the same time, the effect of several city projects, including the route of Metro Rail and the city’s final plan for development of sites adjoining transit stations, is unknown.

Because of the uncertainty, the Stakeholders decided to fund a combined city and community effort to create a comprehensive plan.

The goal is to form a consensus plan, a compromise of the various interest groups, Ratkovich said. The Urban Innovations Group will manage and coordinate the $170,000 effort involving the city Planning Department, Planning Commission, local City Council representatives and Stakeholders.

“In smaller, defined geographic areas, efforts like this need to be encouraged,” Daniel P. Garcia, president of the Planning Commission, said, adding, “Because of the limited resources in the post-Proposition 13 era, it’s not possible for the Planning Department to provide the planning services these areas deserve.”

One issue the study may examine, Gabel said, is the effect of the emerging Korean community nearby. “It can be an important concentration that serves as a support for the mid-Wilshire area, just as Little Tokyo serves as a support for the downtown area.”

The study’s main purpose is to determine “what is the goal for Wilshire center,” Urban Innovation’s Lotery said. “What should it become?” It will also put Wilshire Center in a “community context,” he added, as “a community, not just the boulevard.”